zdl_cryptofandomcom-20200214-history
Litecoin (LTC)
Basics * Created in october 2011, second altcoin after Namecoin. Has some small tweaks, but is basically Bitcoin with faster block times. Was promoted as the Silver to Bitcoin's Gold. * Short explanation: Faster Bitcoin. * Longer explanation: Litecoin is often thought of as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. It has a similar function, but is focused more on small, frequent transactions than as a store of value like Bitcoin. Transactions on the Litecoin network have lower fees are confirmed 4x faster. * Platform: Litecoin blockchain, hard forked from Bitcoin on October 2011, using PoW. * "It was founded by Google employee Charlie Lee on October 7, 2011. Incredibly, Litecoin made a 100% leap within 24 hours and it peaked at a $1 billion market cap later in November 2013." * No Premine or Presale * It was the first successful cryptocurrency to use scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA-256 Current issues: * Since Litecoin runs on a very similar blockchain to Bitcoin, it will eventually have similar scaling issues once the network grows to a certain size. However, the development community is trying to prepare for this by implementing scaling solutions early, such as Lightning Network. * The situation of Litecoin, anno 2019 was clearly explained in this interview with anonymous developer imaginary_username by Coinspice (3-11-2019): "Given that Litecoin only has to spend minimally on development, they follow literally all BTC developments after all, it makes sense for whales to throw money exclusively at marketing. Also, since they have both liquidity – being an old coin helps – and non-hostility from most BTC maximalists, they do have an advantage in that some BTC hodlers will do their marketing for them. The hodlers are pretty decent in number, so that helps quite a bit. And what are you to make of the rumored lack of development on Litecoin? Is there something to that or do you think it’s blown out of proportion? Litecoin can continue indefinitely being a ‘4x bitcoin,’ so I don’t see why they have any urgency in developing anything new that’s not on the BTC roadmap. If I were them, I’d drop any pretense of new things, which, if realized, are actually dangerous for their situation. The only external threat to their existence would be either BTC increases blocksize one way or another, which fortunately for them is not happening; or a surge in BCH popularity, which has been bludgeoned by the market and hence probably not high on their threat list. ‘Lack of unique features’ is very unlikely to be a worry, while ‘deviated from BTC and couldn’t keep up with maintenance, and fall apart in weird ways’ is a very real threat." * 51% Attack warning: “Litecoin’s hashrate has fallen more than 50% from its peak,” claimed anonymous developer imaginary_username, “and there is no other major Scrypt coin to put those dark ASICs to use (Scrypt is an algorithm for mining Litecoin, its main significance is that it’s different from bitcoin (all notable forks); so machines used to mine bitcoin cannot be used to mine Litecoin and vice versa. ''This means that lost hash power has nowhere to go). It is likely more vulnerable to 51% attacks than any SHA-256 coins.”'' Team, partnerships, etc. * Lee, Charlie, founder * “The founder sold most of his coins and he lost the incentive to work on the project and has left the coin without a captain.” https://dashdot.io/alpha/index_118.html?page_id=118 * Is one of the investments chosen by Grayscale, owned by DCG (Grayscale also owns 1% of the BTC supply) Category:Coins/Tokens